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I'm seeing a lot of conflicting information, on Super User and the web in general, about nVidia cards running three monitors. The opinions I have found so far include:

  • no single nVidia card can run three monitors
  • an nVidia card with a display port can drive three monitors.

  • an nVidia card with an HDMI port a DVI and a diaplayport can drive one of each.

    1. Where does this confusion come from?
    2. What are the real requirements for a three monitor card.
    3. is there a definitive list somewhere.

PS: I'm only interested in single card solutions because I only have one PCIex16 slot.
PPS: sorry, SLI is not an option (unless its on a single card)

My goal is to be sure that the card I buy can run three monitors.
I'm limited to Nvidia because I have custom CUDA code it needs to run.
I'm running Ubuntu if it makes a diference.

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The GTX 590 will run 3 monitors fairly well. I'm linking a test done by Tech spot where they bench-marked 11 different games on a unified three monitor setup using the 590 and a Radeon HD6990. The results vary significantly by game and resolution, but the point is that it can definitely do it. They also make note of how dead simple setting it up is:

A few more notes on triple monitor gaming setups... We applaud the ease in which it is possible to setup multiple-monitor configurations. Both AMD and Nvidia have excellent setup procedures and we ran into no real problems when configuring the Dell monitors.

If anyone has more info on other 5 series cards please add it. I don't see any reason the 560 won't handle 3 monitors, it may not put out the same frame rates but it should still work. One final note: this is a dual GPU card so I don't know your reasons for avoiding two cards in sli/crossfire (possibly power?) but I figured it was worth mentioning.

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Well, since you mentioned 5 series, I could run 3 screens on my 5200. It's nice to see that after all these years cards which can run 3 screens are getting common once again. – AndrejaKo Jun 8 '11 at 22:12
its a space limit. i can only fit one card because i only have one PCIe16 slot – Arthur Ulfeldt Jun 8 '11 at 22:14
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do all cards in the 5XX line have the capacity to run three monitors? – Arthur Ulfeldt Jun 8 '11 at 22:15
I can't tell if your being serious or not @andrejako I was thinking that I had heard of people doing it on single cards in the past... I just never actually tried it and remembered seeing that article on slashdot like a month ago so I figured it was some good hard evidence that it's possible. – Kyle Jun 8 '11 at 22:16
@Arthur it does not look like it is possible with the 560 (I just asked a friend)... I know none of the 4xx series cards support it either. – Kyle Jun 8 '11 at 22:21
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